A year ago, The Handmaid premiered on Netflix, based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Stephanie Land, published by Kleidaritmos under the title The Housekeeper (translated by Vasya Tsanakari). Already in the first month of broadcast it was watched by 67 million people around the world. A brutal story about domestic violence, poverty and a difficult struggle for survival. “In the US, the national domestic violence hotline received a record number of calls that first month,” Stephanie Land tells me on the other end of the phone. She is at her home in Missoula, Montana. Everyone who has read the book or already watched the series knows that there Land opened a new page in the book of her life. She bought her first house two years ago and lives with her partner, two children, his two children and their dogs.

In 2008, when she was 30, Lund left her abusive partner and father of her nine-month-old daughter and took refuge in a homeless shelter. “My daughter took her first steps in the homeless shelter where we lived,” she writes at the beginning of her book, which reached number three on the New York Times bestseller list and was included by Barack Obama in his influential “summer reading list.” . It was a time when Lund struggled to find work, working part-time and constantly attending social services, trying to get government assistance and social benefits she and her child needed to survive.

In the following months, Land managed to find work at a cleaning company, becoming a house helper. On the meager wages she received from her job, food and fuel stamps, housing, and child care allowances, she struggled to support herself and Mia for nearly two years. There were days when she went to bed hungry, when she left a sick child in kindergarten because she could not afford to lose earnings, there were sleepless nights when she calculated how much more her little money would last, whether she could buy food for the child . fill up her car with gasoline.

“I hope the book will evoke sympathy and compassion,” he says. “I think people are making unfair assumptions and criticizing those who are poor or don’t have enough money to support their families. I don’t know what’s going on in Greece, but the biggest misconception is that people use government benefits instead of working, that they refuse to work and prefer to live on welfare. It is not true. A large percentage of these people work hard but are not paid enough. I always hoped that people would think differently about the homeless, victims of domestic violence or single mothers.”

“I hope that the book will evoke sympathy and compassion. People make unfair assumptions and criticisms about those who are poor…”

To some extent, he succeeded. “Over the years I have heard from many people that they give more money or tips to housekeepers, people send me pictures of tips they give to their housekeepers or maids in hotels, many have told me that they donate to a local homeless shelter or to charity. victims of domestic violence through the book and, above all, through the series.”

Recently, she admits, she remembered the “trick” that helped her get through difficult days. “I imagined myself older and wiser in ten years. When I edited the book just before it was published, I realized that I was in a completely different situation, I had money, I had a house, and I realized what I had been through and how hard it was to make it. I felt great compassion for my former self and suddenly realized that I was older and wiser. Looking back on my past experiences, I felt a lot of compassion for my old self, instead of feeling like those were the dark days of failure. And now I’m trying to do it again, imagine myself older and wiser in a few years, because being a writer is not something fixed.

She admits that it is still difficult for her to feel safe. “At the time, if I didn’t have a job, I would have panicked. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”

The series brought back all those memories, but it helped that the creators of The Handmaid changed names as well as several characters. “I watched the worst thing that happened in my life, but the character wasn’t really me, and I was grateful for that.”

She watched the first episodes of the series with her daughter. “I wasn’t sure if I could watch it with someone else. It reminded me of events and feelings that I had not thought about for a long time. It was hard to watch the scenes where the actor playing my partner was yelling at Alex. My daughter asked me if he looked like her father and I said yes.

Land was able to get the financial help she needed, move to Missoula, and earn a degree in creative writing from the University of Montana. She is currently working exclusively as a writer and speaker and is preparing her next book, which is expected to be released in late 2022. She does not consider her story successful. “The work did not help me get out of poverty, I was lucky. And that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen to most people.”